Indonesia

Synopsis:
Joni (Nicholas Saputra) is obsessed with film, and he’s not the only one, as he points out in a pre-credit sequence, in which we hear various Jakarta residents comparing their own lives to the movies that they love. Joni has made the movies his life, even if it’s just as a delivery man, using his motorbike to bring film reels from one theater in the city to the next, so that the canny exhibitors can save money on prints. Joni prides himself on always getting to his destination in time for the reel changes, so the screenings aren’t interrupted. Read More »

Based on a true character, GIE is a central yet unknown political activist/writer in the 60’s, the darkest era of Indonesian history. His life is a clash between a high drama of political events, and small world of friendship and romance. He is falling apart when he sees that his constant battle for justice and truth gives labor to another dictatorial regime. As time passes the people around him adjust to the new regime, but he continues to fight. His uncompromised idealism drives people away. His friends left him; the woman he loves rejects him. Only the beauty of nature can rescue and free him.Read More »

Cina was a Chinese-Indonesian Christian young man who got his name ‘Cina’ (China, in English) by misunderstanding in his birth registry and is pursuing his dream to get a scholarship in an architecture faculty in Bandung, Indonesia. He was against his father’s plan for him to leave for Singapore where there’s a scholarship offer with 6 years working contract after, so he could be able to get a chance to be in the governments and to become a governor for Tapanuli, a new province of his dream.Read More »

In the deserted hills of an Indonesian island, Marlina (Marsha Timothy), a young widow, is attacked and robbed of all her livestock by a gang of seven bandits. She then defends herself, setting out on a journey to find justice, empowerment, retribution and redemption. But the road is long, especially when she begins to be haunted by the ghost of her victim. A stunning Scope western set to a Morricone-inspired score, this unique tale of female cinematic revenge takes no prisoners.Read More »

Impulse (1977)
An early experimental abstract animation, made by drawing directly on to 16mm filmRead More »

Synopsis:
Siti (Artika Sari Devi) and Setio (Martinus Miroto) are a married couple living in a small village. They were once dancers in plays depicting the Ramayana, but have since retired from the stage to sell earthenware pottery.

Siti used to play the part of Sita, the wife of Prince Rama, whom Setio portrayed. In an episode from the Ramayana, Siti becomes the object of desire of evil King Ravana and is abducted by him.

The events of the Ramayana are paralleled in the characters’ real lives when Ludiro (Eko Supriyanto), a butcher who rules over all the village’s business affairs, tries to seduce Siti. Read More »

Timely in terms of current Indonesian politics but in other respects long overdue, Nugroho’s extraordinary film looks back to 1965, when the assassination of seven army officers was unconvincingly pinned on communists—giving the dictator Suharto all the excuse he needed for decades of authoritarian rule and arbitrary arrests. There were mass arrests and executions in Aceh, then as now considered Indonesia’s most fractious province. One lucky survivor was the poet Ibrahim Kadir. Nugroho invites Kadir (now 56) to perform some of the didong narrative poems he has written in the intervening years, amid a recreation of events in the Takengon Prison. The film focuses on cells 7 (for men) and 8 (for women); the inmates keep their spirits up with songs, stories of local courtships and tales of government stupidity. More elegiac than angry, the film is presented—very poetically—as a slow transition from monochrome to delicate colour.Read More »

The Evil Queen returns to possess an American girl who she orders to go out and claim victims to sate her blood lust.
Read More »